It launches with a scratch buffer, menu bar with populated menus, a functional mini buffer, and so on. All of this is opinionated defaults and configurable with elisp.

And yes, much of Emacs is broken out of the box and it's been that way a long while. That's not a good thing.

Emacs isn't ready for the masses. Broken defaults, and a brittle experience once features are made working is standard.

I've used Emacs for thirty years now. I don't recommend it to new users.